


Mended With Gold

by Moonsault, orphan_account



Series: Torturous Electricity [4]
Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Competition, Friendship/Love, Future Fic, Kayfabe Compliant, M/M, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 00:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6881143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonsault/pseuds/Moonsault, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens get into the Hall of Fame on the same night.  Who exactly is getting in first is subject to debate, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mended With Gold

**The WWE Hall of Fame Ceremony. The Future.**

“Please welcome the newest inductees into the Hall of Fame: Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn!”

Neville gestured to the side, smiling, and the crowd came to its feet as Kevin and Sami took the stage together. Kevin was wearing a rather rumpled black suit with a crooked tie, while Sami looked more dapper in pale gray (it was clear which of the two of them had learned to take fashion advice from Cesaro over the years). There was silver in Sami’s hair and beard, and Kevin walked with a limp, leaning slightly on Sami. But they were smiling, moving well. They seemed... _comfortable._

Highlights from their careers played on the screen behind them as they came to the podium, and they had to stand and wait until the applause died down and the audience sat back down. Sami met the eyes of people in the audience and nodded at them, smiling; Kevin looked down at the podium, scowling and wrinkling his nose now and then.

The music stopped and Kevin looked at Sami expectantly.

“What?” said Sami.

“Go on,” said Kevin. “Induct me.”

“Now wait just a second,” said Sami. “We’re going to induct each other, right? So why do _you_ get to go in first, huh?”

“Oh my God,” the mic caught Neville saying under his breath.

Kevin looked puzzled. “I get to go in first because I was regularly on the main roster before you, of course!”

“I appeared on Raw before you, man. And I was in the WWE _system_ way before you.”

“I won a title on the main roster before you did. In fact, in case you’ve forgotten, I’d been IC champion two times before you even _got_ there,” Kevin said triumphantly.

“How could I _possibly_ forget?” Sami cast his eyes upward and seemed to be searching for patience. “But I was NXT champion before you won a _single_ title,” he pointed out.

Kevin turned to face Sami as if he’d forgotten the audience was there at all. “I was heavyweight champion before you were!” he snarled.

Sami spread his hands, exasperated. “I was heavyweight champion four times and you were only champion three times.”

“Okay, all right, shut up. Shut up,” Kevin said. “Four times versus three times, _but_.” He held up a hand, ticking rapid-fire items off on his fingers. “Your reigns were for fourteen days, then a hundred days, then three hundred thirty-one days, then forty days. Mine were for two hundred eighty days, a hundred sixty eight days, and eighty-two days. That’s five hundred thirty two days for me versus only four hundred eighty-five days for you, I’m clearly superior and I should go in first.” 

He finally paused to take a breath as everyone listening contemplated the fact that he knew all these numbers by heart.

“Look,” said Sami. “You admit right there that my longest reign was longer than yours.”

“Yeah,” said Kevin, “and who’s the man who ended that one?” He pointed, rather unnecessarily, at himself. “That’s right, buddy. Me.”

“Only because you had that damn Money in the Bank briefcase, Kevin! After you swore you wouldn’t do that to me!”

“It was nothing personal,” Kevin muttered. “Besides, I won that briefcase fair and square and you _never_ did, that’s another accomplishment of mine.”

“Ah ha ha ha,” Sami said, wagging a finger in his face. “If you’re going to start that-- I held every single title in the whole system, and you didn’t.” He lifted a hand in turn, holding up didactic fingers one by one. “I was NXT champion, I was IC champion, I was U.S. champion, I was heavyweight champion--”

“I was King of the Ring and you weren’t!” Kevin hollered. He threw up his arms. “All hail King Kevin! _Vive le roi!_ ”

“That’s not a title, Kev,” said Sami.

“Sure it is.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it _is_.”

“Anyhoo,” said Sami, rolling his eyes. “I won all those singles titles, _and_ I was tag team champion in both WWE and in NXT--I mean, the latter only for a couple of days, but still. You never won the tags in NXT.”

 _“Yeah! About that!”_ Kevin yelled, vibrating with rage. “I still can’t believe you tagged with Mojo Rawley and not me to win that! Hype Ska, what kind of stupid name was that? You went and stabbed me in the back--I thought we were friends, and you went off and teamed up with that moron and _won the title with him_ and not me, it’s not fair, Sami, it’s not _fair_!”

“You were _injured,_ Kev!” Sami was almost bumping noses with him now. “Also, it was _twenty years ago!”_

Kevin looked away from Sami’s face and out at the audience with an expression of long-suffering martyrdom: _Look at what I’ve had to put up with my whole career._ “All right. Whatever,” he said. “You can go in first, that way I don’t have to hear you whine about it forever.”

“I--” Sami was sputtering now. “Me--whine-- _what?”_

“It’s okay, it’s fine,” Kevin said, reaching into his breast pocket and pulling out a piece of paper. It had been folded and creased over and over, and the camera picked up words scribbled down and crossed out jotted all over it. “I know when you’re going to be entirely unreasonable. You win. I hope you’re happy.” 

Kevin shook his head as he unfolded the paper, ignoring Sami, who was standing with hands outspread and a look of utter disbelief on his face. He turned back to the podium, looking down at the paper, and cleared his throat. He blinked hard, sniffed twice. Cleared his throat again. The audience waited in silence. Finally, he took a deep breath and started to talk. 

“On July 15, 2015,” he said, “Sami Zayn cut a promo in NXT and he looked at the camera, and he talked to me. He said…” Kevin swallowed. “He said, ‘Your career, from day one, has been linked to me. Everything you’ve ever done, it’s been about you and me. And--’” Kevin’s voice cracked, and he rallied with a titanic effort. “He said-- uh-- he said, ‘And that’s how it’s going to stay--’”

And to (almost) everyone’s utter astonishment, Kevin Owens put his head down on the podium and burst into tears.

Sami Zayn, who did not look astonished at all, put an arm around his shaking shoulders for a moment. “Dork,” he said, almost too low for the mics to pick up, and leaned in to kiss his temple. 

Then he straightened and smiled into the camera, that smile that always made you feel part of something bigger and better, something wonderful shared together. “A friend of mine once told me about this thing they have in Japan,” he said conversationally. “It’s kind of an art form. See, when a piece of pottery gets broken, something precious and beautiful--” Kevin made an inarticulate and awful noise, his head still buried in his arms, and Sami stroked his hair as he went on: “--these artists don’t try to mend it to hide the breaks and the cracks. Instead, they use gold lacquer to piece it back together, so the places where it was broken aren’t obscured. They’re highlighted, illuminated. The thing is,” Sami said, looking at Kevin’s bowed head, “something that’s broken can never be exactly the same as it was. Not ever. And it’s no good trying to pretend it is, you know? But it can be something…” He stopped, searching for words. “Something… deeper. More beautiful, in its own way. The kind of beauty you only find through sorrow and loss and putting the pieces back together. All the pieces. Beauty that’s hard-won and well-earned. The best kind of completeness.”

He paused and looked at the camera again, gathering everyone up in the light of his smile before continuing:

“All of which is kind of a weird and roundabout way of introducing my good friend Kevin Owens, I suppose. Here’s the thing--he was always really good at smashing stuff up, and he always thought he wasn’t very good at putting stuff back together. But today, as I induct him into the Hall of Fame, I want to tell you about all the things he’s accomplished, and all the things he built up--sometimes even when he thought he was tearing them down. So it is truly my honor and my privilege today to--”

“Damn it,” a tearstained Kevin Owens suddenly announced, lurching up and grabbing Sami by the lapels. “Don’t you dare try to shove me in there before you! Don’t you dare! I know you, Sami, you’ll hold it over my head for the rest of my life, I’ll never hear the end of it: ‘Blah blah blah, and then you cried like a baby while I inducted you into the Hall of Fame first, blah blah blah aren’t I a wonderful person and a great friend,’ that’s just the kind of crap you’d pull, Sami, it’s _just like you!”_

What followed was an undignified tussle in which both men desperately attempted to induct each other while simultaneously clapping their hands over each other’s mouths (“Fucking--Kevin, stop _biting!”_ ) and had to be pulled apart by Neville and Cesaro while Finn Bálor hastily came to the podium and declared they were both in the Hall of Fame together at the same time simultaneously _right now_ , ladies and gentlemen, thank you. 

“That’s it!” screamed Kevin through the audience’s applause, pointing at Sami, “I challenge you to a match at WrestleMania, buddy!”

Sami looked at Kevin and didn’t point out that they were both retired, or that Kevin had a bum knee. Instead he said, “You know we can’t wrestle tomorrow, Kevin. We’d miss Élodie’s match.”

“Oh,” said Kevin, the anger going out of him immediately. “Oh. You’re right.”

Sami took his arm. “But it would have been cool,” he said. “And I’d have kicked your ass.”

Kevin snorted as they started to leave the stage together. “As if.” He tilted his head. “How about SummerSlam?” the mic caught him saying wistfully at the last second. “Maybe we could fight at SummerSlam.”

* * *

Later, everyone agreed that things had gone in pretty much the most appropriate fashion, all things considered, and that it had been far and away the most memorable moment of the evening.

“We still got it,” Kevin laughed, reading the reviews.

“We always will,” Sami agreed.


End file.
